Posted on 02/26/2005 4:45:01 PM PST by DannyTN
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I usually don't bother the list for creationist articles, but this one is an exception.
I'm surprised you pinged them. I'm so use to the "Belongs in religion" comment from you.
I must admit that I am underwhelmed.
Shortly after this original publication, there was an outcry from evolutionists because a peer reviewed scientific journal had published a "Intelligent Design" paper.
The journal eventually issued what amounts to an apology to the so-called "scientific" community. The editor of the Journal was doing research at the Smithsonian Institute and has come under severe discrimination including the threat of having his access cut off.
Creationists have been seeing complete sh!t published in peer reviewed so-called scientific journals for decades.
Two points:
1) Intelligent Design is not creationism.
2) Evolution is not a scientific law; it's a mere hypothesis.
Interesting- ID in a peer-reviewed publication.
But now we'll hear from the usual cast of characters telling us their can be information without an informant, code without a codifier, design without a designer.
I marvel at that kind of faith. I wish I could muster that much faith. :)
And that all that occurred without a trace in the fossil record.
That does take a lot of faith.
Atlantic City and Las Vegas are full to the gills of people with such faith. And continually repopulated too.
Agreed. However, one must ask why an intelligent designer would design us and then leave us with no contact. I suppose there are a number of possible reasons for lack of contact and there are a number of possible designers for which various groups can claim contact. There is One in my opinion that stands out among all others as having had contact and communicated with us.
"2) Evolution is not a scientific law; it's a mere hypothesis."
This I agree with wholeheartedly, it is neither law, fact, nor theory (the way theory is now used). It is hypothesis, and in my opinion a hypothesis that has been adequately falsified by the fossil record.
This might be an historic document.
Did you read it and, if so, did you understand it?
So even here the creationoids continue to "walk in the darkness of ignorance".
I may have to adjust that quote soon.
This has always represented an insurmountable stumbling block for me. Because I can't seem to get over it, Darwinist theory remains at the very least incomplete as a description of biological reality.
How did all them critturs get there in the first place, so that natural selection could find something to do?
And we haven't even touched the claims of macroevolution yet!
This really is a most penetrating article, Tribune7. Thanks so much for pinging me!
It's brief, so I'll copy it in its entirety (the underlining is mine):
The paper by Stephen C. Meyer, "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," in vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239 of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was published at the discretion of the former editor, Richard v. Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history. For the same reason, the journal will not publish a rebuttal to the thesis of the paper, the superiority of intelligent design (ID) over evolution as an explanation of the emergence of Cambrian body-plan diversity. The Council endorses a resolution on ID published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity. Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings.We have reviewed and revised editorial policies to ensure that the goals of the Society, as reflected in its journal, are clearly understood by all. Through a web presence (http://www.biolsocwash.org) and improvements in the journal, the Society hopes not only to continue but to increase its service to the world community of systematic biologists.
"This is therefore the beginning (not the end) of the review process for ID. Perhaps one day the scientific community will be convinced that ID is worthwhile." -Panda's thumb
An encouraging comment, but we are off to a rough start to say the least.
"Although ID is discussed in the concluding section of the paper, there is no positive account of “intelligent design” presented, just as in all previous work on “intelligent design”.
While that's true, that's not unexpected. One must study the design to the point that you almost fully understand it to begin to understand the science involved in creating the design. We don't have the level of understanding yet of either the genetics or molecular manipulation to formulate theories of the design process which is what this is asking for. We've barely begun to learn how to manipulate DNA ourselves, much less theorize about how the Creator did it.
But there are many questions about design itself that may be asked and while evolution and design may ask slightly different questions, in many cases they are so similar as to lead to the same studies. One case in point is the so-called "junk DNA" where evolution seemed ready to accept that that DNA had no function, while Creationists vocalized that they suspected there was function. Both would have continued to study DNA, regardless.
"1. Meyer tries to evaluate morphological evolution by counting taxa, a totally meaningless endeavor for investigating the evolution of morphology."
I don't understand why counting is meaningless in this instance. It seems to me the first step in trying to explain any phenomenon is to attempt to describe, measure and quantify that phenomenon.
2. Meyer repeats the claim that there are no transitional fossils for the Cambrian phyla.
And there's not. Panda's thumb attempts to wave this away by pointing to the microscopic life and then at worms.
Meyers does talk about the Cambrian and whether it was long or short but eventually dismisses it as irrelevant, because you just can't get here from there for the reasons in the rest of his paper.
"3. Meyer attempts to argue that the “gaps” in the fossil record reflect an actual lack of ancestors for Cambrian phyla and subphyla. "
Panda's thumb makes the case that soft bodied animals were not preserved. But there was a recent scientific article published that said that the soft bodied animals were in fact preserved and that the fossil record is reliable in this regard. I believe Meyer's references that article too.
Information and Misinformation
Again Panda's thumb, simply waves away the arguments. In 1 they fuss about the definition of CSI, in 2 they fuss because noone has used CSI to classify stuff, in 3 they fuss because it hasn't been proven that CSI can arrive from random chance, in 4 they seem happier at counting cell types but then dismiss it as not revelant to CSI.
Effectively Panda's thumb is employing a negative argument like they accuse Meyer of doing. They are arguing that the improbability of CSI arriving from natural causes hasn't been fully calculated and therefore we should completely disregard the theory.
"Of Text and Peptides"
"The evolution of new genes has been observed in the lab, in the wild, inferred in great detail between closely-related modern species, and reconstructed in hundreds of cases by comparing the genomes from organisms sequenced in genome projects over the last decade"
Without reviewing the papers cited by Panda's thumb, I doubt seriously that "new genes" evolved. What we are probably dealing with is a robust design that has built in variability that we have selected for in the case of bacterial metaboliziation of toxic substances. This in turn has been interpreted as "new genes" when it is really a function of original design.
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